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This study collection sought to thoroughly understand the creation, testing, and use of forensic science in five jurisdictions across the country. A random sample was selected of recent criminal cases in the following jurisdictions and tracked from investigation to adjudication to understand how forensic evidence functions:

• Sacramento County, CA: 990 cases
• Segwick County, KS: 936 cases
• Allegheny County, PA: 978 cases
• Bexar County (San Antonio), TX: 936 cases
• King County, WA: 892 cases

The Principal Investigator sought answers to the following seven primary research questions:

• How often is forensic evidence collected and analyzed and how is it used pre-arrest?
• What are the outcomes of forensic evidence testing?
• What is the effect of forensic evidence on arrest and charging?
• How does forensic evidence affect the plea-bargaining process?
• What effect does forensic evidence have on conviction and sentencing outcomes?
• Does the turnaround time for analysis of forensic evidence have any impact on case disposition?
• Does the institutional configuration of the crime laboratory have any effect on its productivity?

Data for the following types of forensic testing are included in this data collection: hair, fibers, glass, paint, gas chromatography / mass spectrometry (GC/MS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy / energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX), physical match, drug identification, toxicology, serology, combined DNA index system (CODIS), DNA short tandem repeat (Y-STR), blood pattern, test fire, and comparison scope.

To increase understanding of the prosecution of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth (CSEC) offenders, the Urban Institute, a non-partisan social and economic policy research organization, along with Polaris Project, an anti-human trafficking organization based in the United States and Japan, were awarded a cooperative agreement from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to conduct a 12-month study on CSEC in the United States. The purpose of this research was to conduct a national analysis of federal prosecutions of CSEC-related cases from 1998 through 2005, in order to answer the following four research questions:

• Is the United States enforcing existing federal laws related to CSEC?
• What are key features of successfully prosecuted CSEC cases? What factors predict convictions in cases? What factors predict sentence length?
• Have the U.S. courts increased penalties associated with sexual crimes against children?
• What, if any, are the effects of CSEC legislation on service providers who work with these victims?

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

The Michigan Study of Life After Prison examined the association between neighborhood context and outcomes related to employment and recidivism among the cohort of former prisoners released on parole from Michigan state prisons in one calendar year (2003), controlling for pre-incarceration neighborhood context, local labor market conditions, and a large set of individual characteristics. The primary goals of this study were to answer two questions: (1) "Are ex-offenders who are released to more disadvantaged neighborhoods (those with greater poverty, unemployment, residential turnover, etc.) more likely to recidivate?" (2) "Are ex-offenders who are released to more disadvantaged neighborhoods less likely to gain stable employment?" This research sought to supplement available literature on prisoner reentry and criminal desistance, which the researchers posit existing literature has largely ignored the role that neighborhoods play in shaping the recidivism and employment of returning prisoners.

The 31 data files included as part of this collection are as follows:

Cleaned Data Files:

• casenotearrestsreps1-4_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 4,932 Cases, 12 Variables
• casenotearrestsreps5-8_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 5,302 Cases, 13 Variables
• casenotearrestsrep9_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 2,321 Cases, 13 Variables
• casenoteemploymentreps1-4_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 4,871 Cases, 28 Variables
• casenoteemploymentreps5-8_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 4,754 Cases, 23 Variables
• casenoteemploymentrep9_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 2,610 Cases, 23 Variables
• cleanedcasenoteaddressesreps1-8_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 50,207 Cases, 72 Variables
• cleanedcasenoteaddressesrep9_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 10,309 Cases, 69 Variables
• preprisonaddress_all_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 5,183 Cases, 30 Variables
• preprisonaddress_all_rep9_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 1,017 Cases, 63 Variables
• postprisads_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 11,064 Cases, 41 Variables
• cleaned-demographics-population_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 11,064 Cases, 57 Variables
• simplecrimhistory.dta: 11,064 Cases, 4 Variables
• popSAhistory.dta: 11,064 Cases, 8 Variables
• deathdates_ICPSR-EDITED.dta: 308 Cases, 3 Variables
• popprisonenterdates.dta: 11,064 Cases, 7 Variables
• discharge dates.dta: 7,369 Cases, 5 Variables
• parole and release dates for pop.dta: 11,064 cases, 3 Variables
• mdoc_recidivism_measures.dta: 11,064 Cases, 6 Variables
• recidivism dates from transits.dta: 11,064 Cases, 8 Variables
• recidivism from bir.dta: 11,064 Cases, 3 Variables
• sample marker.dta: 3,689 Cases, 2 Variables
• samplereps.dta: 3,689 Cases, 2 Variables
• tta_rsid_rep.dta: 1,363 Cases, 2 Variables

This dataset attempts to be a comprehensive listing of all pardons granted by United States' Presidents from Washington to Trump. The only president not represented in the data is the 20th president, President James A. Garfield. In total, the dataset contains 77 variables and 32,026 cases. About half of the variables are in character (string) format some of which contain actual dates. The original data was provided in individual Excel files separated by president and by term. Not all variables in the final data file were provided in each original data file.

The data includes variables that provide the recipient's name of the pardon, the date the pardon was granted, the offense committed, details regarding fines and prison stays, along with other details regarding the recipient.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

This study was designed to examine how districts that experienced an incident of school employee sexual misconduct in 2014 defined, interpreted, and implemented key elements of Title IX before, during, and after an incident. The study used a qualitative case study design with a purposeful sample of five districts recruited from a database of 459 districts who experienced a case of school employee sexual misconduct in 2014. The study was conducted between January 2016 and September 2017.

Data collected included: 1) various district documents, 2) 41 interviews with primary actors (school employees and county officials directly involved in responding to the incident), 3) 10 focus groups with 51 secondary actors (school employees who were not directly involved with the incident but who might have been indirectly affected by it), and 4) offender, victim and district characteristics. Documents reviewed included written policies and protocols, training materials and handbooks for staff and students, case documents, and other guiding documents as applicable. In interviews and focus groups, participants were asked to discuss their knowledge of district policies and procedures, to describe the dissemination of and any changes to these policies and procedures, and to provide recommendations for improvement. To protect the confidentiality all district and participant identifying information is confidential and has been removed from any reporting.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

This study examined the extent to which contextual factors influenced variation in sex offender sentencing decisions.

By law, Pennsylvania trial courts were required to submit all felony and misdemeanor convictions under the Pennsylvania Sentencing Guidelines to the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing on a yearly basis.

These data were supplemented with county-level data from the American Community Survey, Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts' Annual Caseload Statistics of the Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania, Associated Religion Data Archives, and Pennsylvania Department of State, Voter Registration Statistics Archives.

The collection contains 1 SPSS data file (Cleaned-Data-2015-R2-CX-0039.sav (n=318048; 31 variables)).

Demographic variables include gender, race, and defendant's age at sentencing.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

This research was conducted in two phases. Phase one analyzed a random sample of approximately 2,000 case files from 2006 through 2009 that contain forensic analyses from the Connecticut State Forensic Science Laboratory, along with corresponding police and court case file data. As with Peterson, et al. (2010), this research had four objectives: 1) estimate the percentage of cases in which crime scene evidence is collected; 2) discover what kinds of forensic are being collected; 3)track such evidence through the criminal justice system; and 4)identify which forms of forensic evidence are most efficacious given the crime investigated.

Phase two consisted of a survey administered to detectives within the State of Connecticut regarding their comparative assessments of the utility of forensic evidence. These surveys further advance our understanding of how the success of forensic evidence in achieving arrests and convictions matches with detective opinion.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

Researchers compiled datasets on prison admissions and releases that would be comparable across places and geocoded and mapped those data onto crime rates across those same places. The data used were panel data. The data were quarterly or annual data, depending on the location, from a mix of urban (Boston, Newark and Trenton) and rural communities in New Jersey covering various years between 2000 and 2010.

The crime, release, and admission data were individual level data that were then aggregated from the individual incident level to the census tract level by quarter (in Boston and Newark) or year (in Trenton). The analyses centered on the effects of rates of prison removals and returns on rates of crime in communities (defined as census tracts) in the cities of Boston, Massachusetts, Newark, New Jersey, and Trenton, New Jersey, and across rural municipalities in New Jersey.

There are 4 Stata data files. The Boston data file has 6,862 cases, and 44 variables. The Newark data file has 1,440 cases, and 45 variables. The Trenton data file has 66 cases, and 32 variables. The New Jersey Rural data file has 1,170 cases, and 32 variables.